


An Age, Long Ago

by NortheasternWind



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 15:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18236906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NortheasternWind/pseuds/NortheasternWind
Summary: Of all Gwyn's children, his firstborn remembers the Age of Dark best.





	An Age, Long Ago

**Author's Note:**

> Caerwyn (White fortress); Caer (fort) + Gwyn (white, fair)

Of all Gwyn’s children, his firstborn remembers the Age of Dark best.

Gwyn had never been a good father, but once upon a time he had been a loving one: Caerwyn saw his father little during his early years, but even now those memories are held close and cherished. Gwyn bouncing his only son on his knee. Gwyn patiently suffering his only son to whine and complain about not being allowed outside. Gwyn going hungry so that his only son may eat instead.

The concept of life was new, then: everything Before had been eternal, with no need for maintenance to sustain it. Caerwyn often wonders what life was like before his birth, when the plants had yet to truly take root and the only source of food for creatures of flesh and blood would have been each other. As it was, eating was a luxury afforded only to the best hunters and the bravest of scavengers, and Caerwyn was frequently left to his own devices as his parents searched.

Do not wander far from camp, they warned. But children only rarely heed such commands.

Caerwyn was out collecting lightning bugs one day— or one night, as it were, for there was no sun in those days and the moon and the lightning bugs were the only lights he had ever known. They were gentle little creatures, nothing at all like their namesake (though that did not frighten him either), and Caerwyn delighted in collecting them to free later in their shelter— the only chore his parents had allowed him at that young age.

Keeping them imprisoned in his tiny pot was quite an undertaking for a clumsy child, and he was trying to shoo his new prizes inside without freeing the old ones when the ground trembled beneath him.

This was not as important as Caerwyn’s task, of course, so he carefully nudged a stray lightning bug into the pot before placing the lid and looking up curiously. How strange! The moon shone clear in the sky, with no sign of clouds in sight. Where, then, had the thunder come from?

It happened again, the low rumbling startling the bugs and knocking Caerwyn off his feet. The lid popped free, and the captive lightning bugs fled its confines toward freedom.

“Hey!”

Caerwyn pushed himself back to his feet and scrambled after them, calling as though they would heed his commands and return. This was a mistake, of course, but both Gwyn and Caerwyn himself had decided later that it little mattered; even then Caerwyn’s white hair had been an impressive mane about his head, making any attempt at hiding useless.

Something crashed into the ground right next to Caerwyn, sending him sprawling to the rocks with a startled squeak.

The thunder stopped. Caerwyn sorted up from down, pushed himself to his feet, and brushed his hands together to remove the tiny stones stuck to them.

Then he looked up and found himself face-to-face with the largest creature he had ever seen.

Caerwyn would never forget his first dragon. Everything seemed so much bigger as a child, and the great beasts of legend were no exception; no dragon he had met since could compare to that first titanic colossus, towering into the sky like the mountains or the archtrees. Even then Caerwyn could see quite well in the dark, and he saw craggy scales, teeth as long as spears, and two black eyes peering down through the darkness into his.

Unfortunately, Caerwyn’s parents had not seen fit to tell their only child tales of dragons. The dragons were their boogeyman, constantly looming specters casting great shadows over their already difficult lives, and they had wished then for him to remain innocent and unafraid for as long as possible.

What they had told him, however, was that sudden movements would startle animals, so he kept very still in an attempt not to scare this one off.

The dragon bent down to look closer, its long neck craning and curving to bring its head to the ground. For some reason its breath did not seem to smell, though Caerwyn felt a blast of hot air as it exhaled into his face, and as he looked up into a dark eye the size of a dinner plate he thought that perhaps the rocks had simply grown legs like people did.

Children are rarely masters of their own impulses, so Caerwyn obeyed his and reached out to lay his hand upon what little of the dragon’s snout he could reach. Yes, it felt just like stone— clearly this was a mountain that had woken up, after falling asleep in a time when there were no people.

“Hello,” Caerwyn greeted, because greeting your elders when they approached you was the polite thing to do.

The dragon rumbled, retreating out of Caerwyn’s reach. Ah, so this was one who paid little heed to children, Caerwyn thought— but then his sight brightened, light and heat springing from the dragon’s mouth, and before he could wonder at a creature producing lightning that lingered instead of flickering out the flames washed over him.

“Eep!”

Caerwyn covered his eyes with his arms, as one is wont to do when another breathes in their face, and did not remove them until the roar of dragonfire had subsided. When he looked again the strange light had caught on his clothes, which was quite interesting actually, except that as he looked the cloth turned black and curled up into nothing, and so with a yelp of dismay he set to brushing the light off of himself.

There was another rumble, and once Caerwyn was free of the light he looked up to find its source. The dragon was watching him, not angry or disinterested. (And not, Caerwyn realized much, much later, surprised.) It had the air of an adult waiting for a child to give the correct answer, and with a child’s intuition Caerwyn suddenly knew exactly what it wanted.

Some of the brush had taken up the light, but it too was fading away to nothing, so Caerwyn had to act fast. He reached out to try and scoop it up with his bare hands, but the warm light did not seem to like his skin so much. He picked up some of the burning foliage and stuffed it into his mouth, only to find that it tasted even more awful than usual (it is not his fault he did not know these plants were not edible, honestly, especially when his parents insisted on feeding him plant matter that looked entirely identical to it). Finally, with little else left to him, he simply grabbed a stick that had fallen in the dragon’s wake, allowed the light to climb onto the end, and then turned around and waved it back and forth in greeting to the strange titan, as the titan had greeted him.

Like a roll of thunder the dragon rumbled again, and Caerwyn felt a rush of pride. He had guessed right, and won the little game they had been playing. What a story he would have when he returned!

But then there was a terrible scream, and a horrid scraping noise, and the dragon reared backwards and roared.

Caerwyn squeaked as he fell over yet again, trembling like a leaf. Every child recognizes their father’s voice, and yet he had never heard his father scream, so frightened, or so terribly angry—

By the time it was over Caerwyn was in tears, truly terrified and unknowing of what had happened before his eyes, and Gwyn scrambled across the rocky brush to scoop his only son into his arms.

“I am sorry,” Caerwyn said, for his father only ever became angry when Caerwyn did something bad, but Gwyn only sobbed and tucked his son against his chest.

Caerwyn would never know how word traveled amongst those few men in the world back then: he could hardly imagine they kept in contact with each other, and meetings between them were rare indeed. But word did travel, igniting whispers and ambitions across the whole of the world: this was not the first time a man had fought a dragon, but it was the first time a man had won.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing a fic about Gwyn's firstborn being born with a dragon's soul instead of a god/man's soul, but then I went to sleep and had a wild thought about what that would have been like in the Age of Dark and this happened instead.
> 
> Someday I have to make Gwyn's wife into a person instead of just a womb for his kids, but not today because if I don't seize this inspiration while I have it I'm positive it'll leave sob
> 
> (I'm posting this like half an hour before class so if you see obvious errors please forgive me and also maybe hit me up in the comments l-lol this is entirely unedited)


End file.
